Working with the internet since the 90s, Shu Lea Cheang and Mark Amerikahave seen the world wide web develop, shift and change into what it is today. As so-called ‘net natives’ Cheang and Amerika share many of the concerns of artists evolving with the WWW, from its emergence in the late-80s/early 90s,to the dot-com bubble, its burst, and now Web 2.0.

Cheang, a multimedia artist and punk at heart has been working with net-based installation, social interface and film production since her early days with open media collective Paper Tiger Television, living as a nomad in New York until finally settling in Paris, and is possibly best known for her work with the Guggenheim’s first web commissions BRANDON in 1998. Amerika is a media artist, novelist and theorist of Internet and remix culture, was named a ‘Time Magazine 100 Innovator’ and his immeasurable influence continues most recently with his theory of remix art publication remixthebook.

Both artists present some of their most recent work, side by side for the first time in a joint exhibition, self-titled Shu Lea Cheang & Mark Amerika, and featuring viral performance, virtual compost and artworks intentionally corrupted by technological processes across sound, electronic literature, comedy and more.

In this interview at Furtherfield Gallery before the launch of their exhibition, running August 31 to October 20, Amerika and Cheang kindly shared their thoughts on data collection, gentrification of the internet and the artist 2.0 commodified. **

Furtherfield Gallery in Finsbury Park presents a shared exhibition between pioneering new media aritsts Mark Amerika and Shu Lea Cheang, opening August 31. Respectively named a “Time Magazine 100 Innovator” and a long time member of open media collective Paper Tiger Television, the two artists have been working across disciplines for decades and no doubt have a lot to teach this next generation of digital artists that we at aqnb find so interesting, if they haven’t already.

Sharing the same interests and obsessions as the rising tide of young artists raised on the internet, both Amerika and Cheang “continue to shape and be shaped by contemporary networked media art cultures of remix, glitch, social and environmental encounters”. See the Furtherfield Gallery website for more details.